Final Specifications

We have laid out most of our final specifications. They are scattered about in notebooks and on sheets of paper, so I thought it would be best to organize all our ideas in one place. Why not a blog?

The first issue we discussed was the age of people using our device. Our device, which uses fingerprinting to access a dose, is definitely meant for adults. Thus, our debate mainly revolved the issue of children. Can they be trusted with such a device? At first, we played around with the issue of adult supervision. Perhaps a parent’s fingerprint could be used to unlock the device, rather than a child’s. But then we ran into the problem of school, or basically anytime the child is away from a parent. Maybe a school nurse could unlock the device, we brainstormed. But we quickly shot down that idea as well; what if, for example, the nurse was absent for the day? Eventually, we decided that the idea of supervision was impractical, especially when the child may desperately need the medication. We simply cannot take the risk that a parent, or a school nurse, is not around to unlock the device. We decided the best solution to this problem was to limit our device to people ages 14 and older. We picked the age 14 because that is the year most students enter high school. They should be mature enough to use the device responsibly.

The next issue that we discussed was the power button. At first, we debated whether or not the patient should even have control over the power button. We worried that if the device was shut off, the patient may forget to take medication at the allotted times. In addition, we had initially planned to have the device flash and buzz every time a dose should be taken (for example, every six hours). In this case, the device definitely cannot be turned off. We did not like this idea, however. Can a device even be programmed to not shut off? We eventually brainstormed a better solution. We decided that the patient needs to wear a small wristband that is programmed to buzz or light up when the patient needs to take medication. This idea was much more practical: the patient will definitely notice if a wrist band (always with them) alerts them, while our original idea relied upon the patient always carrying the device with him. As we looked further into the wrist band idea, we realized that such “medical alert” devices not only already exist, but are very popular. The device does not even need to be a wrist band; it could be a small beeper attached the belt, for example. This was a strange moment for us. We spent a very long time brainstorming this idea, and with one quick search on Google, realized that such an idea has existed for years. We were proud to come up with the idea on our own, but realized that in the future, there is nothing wrong with building off other’s ideas.

The next issue we tackled was probably the most difficult: size and capacity. We began by considering the most important issue: fitting at least 200 doses into a small device. (For our device, we are assuming that one pill equals one dose. We are aware that for some pain medications, this may not be the case.) We researched the size of an average pain med. The dimensions we found were 1.5 centimeters by 1 centimeter by .7 centimeters. Thus, one pill takes up around 1.05 cubic centimeters. We multiplied this number by 200, and found that the minimum space for pills is 210 cubic centimeters. However, we realized we must account for dead space (we just had a chemistry class about close-packing atoms and space-efficiency, which was where we got the idea). We poured a giant bottle of pills into a little container to better visualize how they fit together. There was considerable overlap and little dead space, so we decided we should expand the space designated for pills to around 250 cubic centimeters. The dimensions we settled upon for the pills are 8 (length) by 8 (width) by 4 (depth) centimeters. This brings the total volume to 256 cubic centimeters, right around our goal. After figuring out the size for pill storage, everything became much easier. We easily tackled the overall dimensions. For length, we said the device would be 8 centimeters long, plus however much space we needed for the motor, latch, and batteries. The additional space ended up being 5 centimeters, so our device is a total of 13 centimeters long. The width remains the same as the width of our oil storage space: 8 centimeters. The depth is slightly larger than the pill storage area—five centimeters, instead of four. This extra centimeter is to account for the touch screen, which may extend back into the device. We need to further research this area. Regarding the touch screen, we settled upon dimensions of seven by seven centimeters. We wanted to make the device as wide as possible, in order to accommodate older people who may have trouble pressing the correct key. A wider screen translates to larger keys and letters on the screen, which we hoped would facilitate this problem. As for the rest of our device’s components, we have decided upon tentative sizes. We plan to have the latch where a patient reaches for a pill to be 2.5 (length) by 2 (width) centimeters. We still need to decide upon an exact depth. We do know that this area will be closed off from the rest of the device: when a patient sticks a finger in there, the only thing they can access is the one available pill that has been requested, not the rest of the supply. The remaining two screens will be relatively small. The first, which tells the patient how many doses are left for a set period of time (probably for a day), we assumed would be a single digit number. Thus we set the size to be one centimeter by one centimeter. The second screen tells the patient how many total doses are left in the device. This number could be a two or three digit number, so we expanded the size to 2 (length) by one (width) centimeter. The last component of our device we discussed was the fingerprinting screen. We researched the average size of such a screen, and looked at the one on Taylor’s computer, and decided upon dimensions of two by two centimeters. Lastly, we designated the empty area around the latch at the bottom for the motor and lithium ion batteries. We do not have any specific dimensions for these areas yet.

This morning, I made a sketch containing all of these final specifications. I think we have most of the overall sizes and components worked out as of now. We need to work on the inward mechanisms, which Taylor discussed in her last blog entry.